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Robert Reynolds (Earth-616)
__TOC__ Real Name: Robert Reynolds Nicknames: No known nicknames Former Aliases: John Victor Williams Other Current Aliases: Void Status Occupation: Hero Legal Status: Citizen of the United States with no criminal record Identity: Secret Marital Status: Married Group Affiliation: Avengers Base of Operations: Base of operations unknown Origin Robert Reynolds was startled from sleep in the middle of a lightening storm. Driven by fractured recollections of an unfamiliar past, he rescued a hidden bottle from his library. Teetering just beyond his confused grasp, visions of a mysterious mortal enemy had begun to chip away at the barriers to his forgotten former life. As Reynolds drank from the bottle, he felt an energy course through him like that of a million exploding suns. The splintered images of his prior existence began to coalesce. He remembered himself as a hero -- the Sentry, Golden Guardian of Good -- fighting alongside the Avengers, Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four and the X-Men. Before his fall from grace, Reynolds had conquered time and space itself. He was omnipotent; he was immortal. He was the Sentry. But this was revealed to by a lie forged by the Void. In truth, Robert Reynolds was a troubled youth suffering from a split personality. Seeking a drug-induced release he drank a chemical being worked on by The Professor. This chemical was a version of the Super Soldier Serum modified by the scientists at Weapon X to be one thousand times the strength of the original. Because of the split personality, two beings were formed: The Void and The Sentry. One was the embodiment of good, the other the embodiment of evil. Both were still Robert Reynolds. Both represent a balance. Now, for every person that the Sentry saves, the Void kills an equal number. Place of Birth: Place of birth unknown Known Relatives: Lindy Reynolds (wife) First Appearance: SENTRY #1, rumored to be STARTLING STORIES #17 History Empowered by the enigmatic Professor's secret formula, high school student Robert Reynolds became a superhuman. After trouncing the school bully who had tormented him, Reynolds sewed together a costume and made his debut as the heroic Sentry. One of very few super heroes active during the years just prior to the Fantastic Four's emergence, Sentry gained new importance when the new wave of heroes rose to prominence. Almost instantly deducing Spider-Man's secret identity, Sentry became a role model for the young hero, as well as an ally to the X-Men, an equal to Reed Richards and a friend to the outcast Hulk. The Sentry even battled Dr. Doom alongside the Fantastic Four and defeated his greatest enemy, the General, with the X-Men's aid. During this period, the Sentry married the love of his life, Lindy, and took the young Scout as his sidekick; but the arrival of the Void, a shadowy monster that exploited its enemy's greatest fears, ended the Sentry's charmed life. The Void nearly killed Scout, drove Hulk into a rampage, and murdered over one million people in Manhattan. Discovering that the Void had been the dark aspect of his own powers, the Sentry teamed with Reed Richards and Dr. Strange to create a system which made Earth's entire population, themselves included, forget all about the Sentry. With the Sentry inactive and forgotten, the Void vanished. Years later, Robert's memories slowly returned along with the Void, who rampaged across Europe, murdering many members of the Super-Heroes of Europe (SHE). The Sentry contacted his former colleagues, but the only one who recalled their shared history was the Hulk. As the Void returned to Manhattan, the pieces began to fall in place and the Sentry's former friends assembled to defend him and the city. Remembering the dual nature of Robert's powers, Sentry and Reed Richards reactivated the Watchtower, dispelling the Void and making the world forget the Sentry once again; however, Robert's memories of the Sentry soon returned, and he demanded to be placed on the Raft, S.H.I.E.L.D.' high-security prison for super-villains, claiming that he had killed his wife. During a mass breakout at the Raft, Sentry helped several other heroes subdue many of the escaping villains - notably Carnage, whom Sentry ripped in half. Inspired by this adventure, the other heroes soon formed the new Avengers, but Sentry vanished before they could invite him to join them. The Sentry stayed in hiding, but remained a person of great interest to S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers, who were both fascinated by his powers and worried that they may lead to another Scarlet Witch situation. Eventually, S.H.I.E.L.D. and the New Avengers confronted the Sentry with several disturbing facts: The wife he claimed to have killed was alive, and the only reference in the world that could be found of the Sentry was in comic books, stories invented and written down by the imagination of a man. Unable to face these shocking events, the Sentry fled. Resurfacing as Robert Reynolds at his home, the Sentry was again confronted by the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D., along with the Inhumans and the X-Men. He cried, saying that he had warned them of the Void's coming and that it was now too late. The group was suddenly attacked by the Void. Robert, along with the help of Emma Frost, discovered that the reason no one remembered him was not because of his own attempts to erase the Void, but because of the intervention and manipulation of his mind. Mastermind, hired by the General, had used the great mental powers the Sentry needed to contain his abilities to force everyone (himself included) to forget of the Sentry's existence. Should the Sentry ever remember his life, then he would be struck by a fear of the devil attacking the world, hence the Void. With this new found knowledge, the Void disappeared, and Emma Frost resurrected the Sentry. The New Avengers offered him membership, partly to keep an eye on him and partly because they would need his power, which he accepted. The Sentry Hoax The Sentry was marketed with a hoax. Comic industry magazine Wizard reported that Marvel had discovered sketches by an unknown artist named Artie Rosen of a superhero created by Stan Lee immediately prior to the Fantastic Four. The Sentry miniseries was promoted as the first appearance of an unknown Stan Lee Silver Age hero. However, Marvel had made the whole thing up and Wizard had played along, for reasons revealed in the story. The Sentry and The Marvel Universe The miniseries established Bob Reynolds, a borderline alcoholic married man with possible psychotic delusions, as the Sentry, a Superman-like hero who derived his powers from a special serum. The Sentry was an optimistic and socially accepted hero who stood in marked contrast to the mostly freakish nature of Marvel characters. He had connections to Mister Fantastic, Iron Man, the Hulk, Spider-Man and Professor X. However, his existence was retroactively erased by an unknown figure who tried to conceal the Sentry's identity even from himself. This was also the reason that Lee and Marvel had supposedly forgotten about the character. The Sentry's sidekick, Billy Turner, the Scout, had also been affected by this erasure. It was revealed that the Sentry and his archenemy the Void required each other to exist, and as one grew more powerful, so did the other. The Sentry remembered that he was the one who had erased the world's memory of him and restarted the program that would do so, defeating the Void once again. The whole story can be seen as a meta-commentary on the darkness that overwhelmed superhero comics by the mid-80s, destroying the optimism and wit of the Silver Age. At the end of the limited series, it seemed as if the Sentry would fade away into obscurity again. The Sentry as an Avenger However, in 2004, the Sentry was reintroduced by Brian Michael Bendis in the pages of New Avengers. In the first issue, lawyers Daredevil and Foggy Nelson with bodyguard Luke Cage and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jessica Drew travel to 'The Raft,' a super-maximum security annex to Rykers (not "Rikers" in Marvel) Island penitentiary designed to hold supervillains. Here, Murdock and Nelson are visiting the Sentry, who has been imprisoned for murdering his wife, in order to "find out what happened to him and his wife". Soon after their arrival the supervillain Electro stages a massive jailbreak, freeing almost ninety supervillains who then attack Murdock, Nelson, Cage and Drew, along with the newly arrived Captain America and Spider-Man. During the ensuing melee the group is confronted by the alien symbiote, Carnage. Foggy Nelson, thrown into the cell containing Robert Reynolds, attempts to convince the Sentry to help them. Without saying a word, the Sentry blasts through nine levels of the complex carrying Carnage into space, where he rips the alien symbiote in half, possibly killing it (there appeared to be no body inside the symbiote). Issues of New Avengers #s 7-10 revealed the true story behind Sentry's delusions and psychopathic tendencies. It was revealed that the Sentry has powerful psychic and mental powers holding his physical powers together. This fact was then exploited by the Mastermind, Jason Wyngarde, who was hired by a long-forgotten villain, the Crazed General. The Mastermind implanted a mental virus inside the Sentry's mind which gave birth to his delusions and eventual existence of the Void, which is actually his repressed persona. This also gave the Mastermind the ability to make him sense anything he wants to. The mental virus subsequently impared his ability to remember his old life and a solution he saw was to implant his memories into the comic writer Paul Jenkins, who then drew his comics. Luckily for Reynolds, Emma Frost knew how the Mastermind's powers work and was able to cure him, paving way for his official inclusion to the Avengers and the installation (or appearance) of the Watchtower atop the Stark Tower. But what the inclusion of the Sentry in the New Avengers line-up means in terms of future storylines (in regard to the events of The Sentry mini-series) remains unseen. A new 8-issue Sentry mini-series by Paul Jenkins and John Romita, Jr. was launched by Marvel in late September 2005, spinning out of events in New Avengers #s 7-10. Sentry Mini-Series In the Sentry mini-series the true origin of Sentry and the Void was laid out. Through a series of attempts at figuring out why the world was made to forget the Sentry (which led into a quest for the REAL origin of the Sentry), it was revealed that both the Void and the Sentry were Robert Reynolds, and that Dr. Strange forced everyone to forget who the Sentry was so the world could also be rid of the Void. Eventually confronted with the truth, the Sentry and the Void face off, with the Void revealing the truth of their origin. It's also revealed that ANYONE could have become the Sentry, that Robert Reynolds ingesting the formula was a complete fluke. The final battle with the Void ended when the Sentry snatched the Void, flew to the sun, and threw the Void in, with the Void promising that he would return. Characteristics Height: 6'2" Weight: 200 lbs (xxx kg) Eyes: Blue unknown Hair: Blonde Unusual Features: No unusual features Powers Known Powers: The Sentry's abilities derive from an experimental serum that creates a phase-shift in his molecules, causing each atom to step an instant ahead of the current timeline. The serum induces a photosynthetic reaction, resulting in a hyperstate of consciousness. The Sentry's powers are derived from a serum which causes his molecules to step an instant ahead of the current timeline. Though most of his powers and their limits are still unknown, he has displayed several abilities similarly possessed by DC's Superman. Such are super-strength, super-speed, invulnerability, and flight. Aside from those mentioned, he can also project energy fields, control light, and has vast psychic and mental forces mainly used for holding his physical powers together, though it is not yet mentioned whether the Sentry can use them the way Professor X and other psychics use theirs; the only psychic abilities he had displayed so far is implanting his memories inside Paul Jenkins' mind and calming the fury of the Hulk. It may be theorized that the Sentry also has the ability to produce hard-light constructs similar to those of Dazzler's when it was revealed that the Void is a just an expression of his repressed persona, and thus his creation. With Marvel dubbing The Sentry as the world's most powerful superhero, and with the serum causing a photosynthetic reaction to his body, completely altering his state of consciousness, it is nonetheless conceivable that Sentry's powers are limitless, and may even rival those of the Silver Surfer's and Phoenix's. He has very similar powers to Gladiator and Hyperion, as they too were based on Superman. In effect, the Sentry's powers are limitless. Known Abilities: No known abilities. Strength Level: Super Human Miscellaneous Equipment: Cloc, a robot designed to monitor the world for emergencies and inform Sentry of the most important ones. Transportation: Flight Weapons: No known weapons. Notes * The Sentry is one of the strangest comic book superheroes to emerge in recent years. He was created by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee for the Marvel Comics Marvel Knights line. 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